The man or woman that figures out how to quickly and accurately predict the who, what, where, when, why, and how bugs occur will end up with more money than all the computer billionaires combined.
This one was horribly rushed. I was one of the tribble testers in the "closed" session when it was just gold members.
We were almost wholly ignored. It is also glaringly obvious they either A. have no internal QA department or B. need to get some competent people that can actually stress test and check for bugs before something is released.
Dont give them any benefit of the doubt either, a simple test of the combat mechanics would have revealed the proc debuff error, a simple test of loading the client would have shows the grey bar at the bottom of the screen issue, among tons of others. Come on man.
Fleet Admiral Rylana - Fed Tac - U.S.S Wild Card - Tactical Miracle Worker Cruiser
Lifetime Subscriber since 2012 == 17,200 Accolades = RIP PvP and Vice Squad
Chief of Starfleet Intelligence Service == Praise Cheesus
I know the Dyson Sphere was a huge project to design and construct. I know all of the "new" content in there has taken a great deal of effort to prepare.
However I also know that adding bugs is pure laziness. Check your work!
I know ignoring old bugs and releasing new Seasons is pure commercialism. Make new shiny shiny for more greenbacks. Forget the players, they don't matter.
I know that not delaying the release of Season 8 is a 100% commercial decision. MOAR DOLLAZ PLEEZ!!
I know that Tribble testing is completely pointless; bug reports are always ignored. Those that aren't ignored and are fixed are done ONLY because they're easy and quick OR because the coder whodunnit will be fired for not rectifying their sloppy work. They would have been fixed without Tribble involvement.
I do have one desire though, one that could be sated by nothing more than one man...
I know it's a pipe dream, but I'd love it if one dev, just one, would come forth and tell us WHY they added the bugs. They didn't add themselves, computers only do what you tell them to do!
I'd love to know WHY they don't bother to test. Seriously, did not one dev bother to log into the game and press "Use Large Hypo" or "Use Engine Battery"? If they didn't, then someone really should be fired for gross incompetence. If they did, why did they allow the release of the bug? And then they should be fired for gross incompetence anyway. Which is, of course, why they always lie and cover their tracks I guess.
Really these are simple questions that would placate of great deal of frustration. Yes, they'd require a level of honesty that online develops never show, but it would be... well... nice.
I know the Dyson Sphere was a huge project to design and construct. I know all of the "new" content in there has taken a great deal of effort to prepare.
However I also know that adding bugs is pure laziness. Check your work!
I know ignoring old bugs and releasing new Seasons is pure commercialism. Make new shiny shiny for more greenbacks. Forget the players, they don't matter.
I know that not delaying the release of Season 8 is a 100% commercial decision. MOAR DOLLAZ PLEEZ!!
I know that Tribble testing is completely pointless; bug reports are always ignored. Those that aren't ignored and are fixed are done ONLY because they're easy and quick OR because the coder whodunnit will be fired for not rectifying their sloppy work. They would have been fixed without Tribble involvement.
I do have one desire though, one that could be sated by nothing more than one man...
I know it's a pipe dream, but I'd love it if one dev, just one, would come forth and tell us WHY they added the bugs. They didn't add themselves, computers only do what you tell them to do!
I'd love to know WHY they don't bother to test. Seriously, did not one dev bother to log into the game and press "Use Large Hypo" or "Use Engine Battery"? If they didn't, then someone really should be fired for gross incompetence. If they did, why did they allow the release of the bug? And then they should be fired for gross incompetence anyway. Which is, of course, why they always lie and cover their tracks I guess.
Really these are simple questions that would placate of great deal of frustration. Yes, they'd require a level of honesty that online develops never show, but it would be... well... nice.
Because Cryptic's devs are not really qualified programmers, I don't think. Probably like those shady doctors that can get a degree from Hollywood. When I think "Cryptic Dev", an image of "Doctor Nick" from the Simpsons flashes into my head.
I can seriously imagine that is what Daniel Stahl looks like. "HI EVERYBODY!"
there are even more new/old bugs that always show up when things hit the live servers.
Only if they don't test properly first!
Test thoroughly first and bugs will rarely be released, thus ensuring smooth, enjoyable gameplay.
Test at all and it will happen far less, so the players might complain and gripe a bit, but mostly the gameplay is fine and people can adapt.
Utterly fail to test and bugs will be released aplenty and will require constant maintenance to remove, detracting massively from the paying experience.
Which scenario are we, the players, enjoying/suffering at the moment?
Well, who are we to agrue with such an empiric and scientifically backed evidence? :rolleyes:
if people like to think of trek as Kirk and his 5 year mission, that is good enough. tbut that also says alot in regards as to how everyone else expects star trek to be. peaceful exploration, some intrigue and the occasional bar room brawl.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Season 8 is nice and brings a easier reputation system and basically dinosaurs that are easy to kill. A big Jurassic Park..
I feel STO is just a shoot and kill game now completely different from "seaking new life" and exploration. I only play it now for those quick chat to fleet members. If anyone see this, check out Artemis Spaceship Simulator. I think STO should consist of the team gameplay like Vivienne.
indeed new bugs would pop up but if the most serious ones from the test were eliminated, cryptic would spent several days less on bug fixing then they should be doing.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Wrong. Even if they managed to resolve all the bugs that got discovered during beta testing, New bugs and old bugs will still appear once everything launches on the live server.
That's a fact of life. No MMO is immune to that happening.
Wrong? I say there will be far fewer bugs, ("rarely be released" not "never be released") not no bugs. You say there will still be bugs. You agree with me, yet you say I'm wrong. Odd
(And old bugs only resurface if the original coding is flawed. If the bug had been properly fixed, not simply patched over, then it wouldn't resurface)
Season 8 is a let down compared to last update. In New Romulus missions we had several new missions.. which is what I like the most in this game. I am actually rolling out more alts because I like to level up a character. After 50 I am little less active,.. since I am not a big fan of the grind,.. specially not for several character.
I want to be part of a story,.. follow that story.. even at top rank.
The ground battlezone is fun,.. I quite like it. if only it wasn't so far away. Its hard to organize groups to get the zones since most people on STO do not communicate much, unless you have a group from your fleet or such. Something of this feels odd.. surely there is better way to organize this?
The space missions (and the "mission".. I really think this should not be set up as a mission.. its really misleading. It would be better if this would be placed in available missions under tutorial. I was highly disappointed since I seeing those listed in the mission tabs thought it was actually a mission. Please remove it from there!) are .. I have to admit in my mind boring. I will probably not doing them that often. Its hard to get around in that map,.. and you don't really see where the missions are. You can't use the map to auto travel to certain points as you can in the section maps. Sure,.. the "space" map is beautiful.. (apart from I am seeing some clipping issues), but its not the kind of gameplay I like. In a actual mission it makes sense.. but here.. nahh.. I just don't like scanning here and then there... not interesting, its just pushing a button.
The new lockbox is that I consider to be the best lockbox. I love the pet and I love the outfit. I do like the look of the nee ships.. the science ship is a rarity.. but I also know that for me I will probably never get hold of one. The 2 ships I have been able to get via lockbox was actually given to me by very nice friends. And yes I opened a few boxes myself, no luck for me.
The sphere fleet holding is .. umm.. very bare. But honestly I don't think i will spend that much time at this fleet holding, .. these fleet holdings are so empty.
I personally think they need to make use of these pleases better.. and not only fleet holdings.. but also common places like DS9.. give us purpose to travel to certain places. And yes. there is that already in some extent.. Integrate those places with actual a story, not just a mission to click here and there and thats it.
I do like the new STFs.. although I haven't actually played them yet. The idea seems nice.
Anyways.. the conclusion is that this season is no big hit,.. yes ground is really nice but the space is not that interesting. If I will do anything this season its ground.. but even that is still not super interesting.
I hate to be negative .. but thats my impression of what I am seeing. The main big hit for me is that now I can play this game on mac.
..Oh yeah I almost forgot.. I do LOVE the new FED tutorial.. a really interesting story. And I love the voice/characters in that piece.
These patch notes that have "known issues" listed are completely unacceptable too. If you know about it, FIX IT.
Really? How is it unacceptable? You do understand that knowing a bug exists is a totally different thing from knowing what has caused it and a totally different thing from actually fixing it.
Some bugs can take ages to track down and fix. should they not fix any of the others bugs they can fix in the mean time then? They should let every bug they can fix just sit there unresolved until they can track down them all. is that your solution?
should they not mention them at all, and be accused of not acknowledging them?
Need to get in the mood to play that Fed tutorial. Not sure yet if it should be a foul or a good mood. Both seems equally appropriate from a neutral perspective. This is what I hate about neutrality, it is so inherently passive.
This is nothing. Prior to the Season 8 patch, I could access the game. After the Season 8 patch, I was first getting just a black loading screen. Then, after a reinstall, I got a black loading screen with a horrendous crash of the client.
This game has just become pathetic.
This is what happens when a Chinese company is the parent company of Cryptic. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but quality control has never been a strong point for the Chinese.
possibilitiesare a thing of hope,sometimes it drives us toward something better
Well at least I feel vindicated. I had spent months warning people that these horrible ideas Geko had to pervert the voth example would end terribly and that's exactly what we have. Nothing about the voth are fun.
In all fairness I'll list what I've enjoyed so far:
I DO like the combined populace effort. More constructs like the battlezone were needed. So the developer's glean on this mechanic was spot-on. However like all things Geko's lead have taken us on usually end up construed hastily and introduced with little to no QA whatsoever. The sphere of influence mission alone was so plagued by spelling errors that it made me terribly annoyed. Not that there were spelling errors per se but that they didn't care enough to read through the panels they created for the story line which I find highly detracting.
I DO like the components that went into the breach PVE. Its about time they offer a map with a chance to immerse the player with an intuitive environment.
But that's about it.. I could go on a long-arms list of why season 8 is terrible but it's nothing different than what I was trying to warn about for months now. If it weren't for the handful of dynamics introduced season 8 would be a complete flop.
The part that really annoys me beyond belief is that not only did Geko refuse to listen when numerous players complained about the dinos with lasers, his product is a joke. The V-Rex is so easy to kill and when its surrounded it just stands there and roars a little and gets pecked down. That and all his dinos are bald and unrealistic.. It's really a travesty how watered down they make the maps feel.
The raptor/runner whatever dinos.. They're not scary at all. They're like targs with jurasic park imagery.
They would have been better off creating a wide variety of mech warriors which would have been much easier to swallow for theme's sake.
It seems Cryptic blew the whole budget on art and didn't have time or money to think up a halfway decent story to go with it. WHAT THE **** HAPPENED, CRAPTIC?
The worst part of it is that they KNOW their graphics are unoptimized, BADLY. Yet they insist on overcrowding instances and then putting an absolute ton of stuff you can't stop from rendering to make it all run worse than ever.
I was in the sphere last night, where the 4 Voth dreads show up and good grief, if your camera was facing a certain way the framerate droped like crazy. I thikn its all the trash foating in columns. Why did they feel the need to add so much graphical detail to a zone they KNOW will be overcrowded with PCs and NPCs?
Morals based on Federation ideology. Pushing your own morals on another culture or civilization makes you look like a jerk. Doing it with military force backing it makes you something to be hated, shot at, etc.
The Prime Directive is basically, "Mind your own business, because it's seldomly turned out well to be the judge, jury, and executioner of another culture, race, species, etc."
The real problem with the more modern trek interpretation of the prime directive is that it requires people stop being people. You can only truly follow it to the letter if you were an heartless machine... and even data spat on the prime directive now and again!
We also have countless trek writers looking for a source of drama and thinking they can show inner turmoil in the character by making them struggle with the prime directive. Notice they always went out of their way to say how noble and high minded the prime directive was on those episodes when it required starfleet officers to be total douchebags? How can such a thing be good? How is letting aplanet die EVER the right choice? What a bunch of BS! lol
The biggest flaw of enlightened humanity in trek? It was often portrayed as inhuman. Give mea flawed human civilization any day over the federation! Of course, that was starfleet officers, the average fed citizen could go around dancing in pre warp culture's capital cities telling everyone about outer space if they wanted, since it was clearly stated that the prime directive only applied to starfleet. I can only hope there's entire civilian federation fleets tasked with saving non fed planets and cultures from themselves, natural disasters, redirecting asteroids, etc.
The thing I think is really missing in Season 8 content is the part in between the featured episode where we had Worf the ultimate voice of reason during the entire episode, where he even had more reason in his narrative then Captain Shon, and the now where we are just ready to kill all the Voth and not even attempt to find out why they are collecting Omega particles.
For all we know they are gathering them to use in a desperate attempt to stop the Iconians and here we come along and perhaps completely destroy any chance of them being the catalyst to stopping a full fledged invasion.
We just listen to the Romulan voice of reason, the voice Starfleet has always questioned in all of Star Trek since TOS and now we are even taking orders from these Romulan's to quash what ever it is the Voth are attempting to do with these Omega particles.
There really did need to be some episode missions that CONTINUED the storyline that the feature episode with Worf started, and really it barely started that story and if we are in the part of the story the Sphere has us now it makes no sense what so ever. Any fiction writer would be told by their editor to produce the chapters that are missing, I can positively guarantee that.
So it is painfully obvious to me that Cryptic has no idea what so ever when it comes to writing good fiction, oh they can start things but they have no finish what so ever.:(
The thing I think is really missing in Season 8 content is the part in between the featured episode where we had Worf the ultimate voice of reason during the entire episode, where he even had more reason in his narrative then Captain Shon, and the now where we are just ready to kill all the Voth and not even attempt to find out why they are collecting Omega particles.
For all we know they are gathering them to use in a desperate attempt to stop the Iconians and here we come along and perhaps completely destroy any chance of them being the catalyst to stopping a full fledged invasion.
We just listen to the Romulan voice of reason, the voice Starfleet has always questioned in all of Star Trek since TOS and now we are even taking orders from these Romulan's to quash what ever it is the Voth are attempting to do with these Omega particles.
There really did need to be some episode missions that CONTINUED the storyline that the feature episode with Worf started, and really it barely started that story and if we are in the part of the story the Sphere has us now it makes no sense what so ever. Any fiction writer would be told by their editor to produce the chapters that are missing, I can positively guarantee that.
So it is painfully obvious to me that Cryptic has no idea what so ever when it comes to writing good fiction, oh they can start things but they have no finish what so ever.:(
ya know, you'd think they'd contact the people who did actual star trek episode scripts? Right?
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
This one was horribly rushed. I was one of the tribble testers in the "closed" session when it was just gold members.
We were almost wholly ignored. It is also glaringly obvious they either A. have no internal QA department or B. need to get some competent people that can actually stress test and check for bugs before something is released.
Dont give them any benefit of the doubt either, a simple test of the combat mechanics would have revealed the proc debuff error, a simple test of loading the client would have shows the grey bar at the bottom of the screen issue, among tons of others. Come on man.
Honestly.... It seems more like it's a matter of bug reports going into the inbox and they may or may not have gotten around to fixing them yet.... I've spent enough time modding various games to know how annoying bug testing and fixing can be.... some ideas I've had were totally scrapped because they conflicted with some base game mechanic in ways that I still don't understand.
Example from Space Empires 5:
I tried to create a system that is a small stellar cluster.
Step 1: add a central star; good
step 2; add 6 stars orbiting it at various distances; good
step 3; add a star orbiting each of the six in step 2; CRASH!
Why? no clue. Occasionally it'd work but not often. My best guess is that it was clumping the stars and somehow, not sure how, trying to spawn a star where there was no room. I never fixed it. I came up with a different way of achieving a similar result that worked better in some ways. I spawned the six stars in fixed points, and had their satellite stars spawn at random, the result was only somewhat more predictable.
if people like to think of trek as Kirk and his 5 year mission, that is good enough. tbut that also says alot in regards as to how everyone else expects star trek to be. peaceful exploration, some intrigue and the occasional bar room brawl.
ORLY? When I think of TOS I think of glorious battles, both in space and ground. Kirk vs the Gorn, the Enterprise vs whatever the villain of the week was. The Doomsday device was particularly epic.
Essentially the way it works here is that every item is known as an object. An object is basically a file which is governed by characteristics known as values. So in this fashion, A ship is an object, the consoles held within are objects and so forth and so on.
So what they have is a massive collection of objects, some are just simple virtual objects like debris in a space map. It's likely to be just a 3d model with perhaps a layer or two. But like all objects in a 3D environment there are layers of color and texture which composite those objects. So one could say that in a way its very complex and this is why they keep talking about anything simple like more storage space for fleets would create a "database issue". It just means more memory allocation for yet again, even more objects.
Unfortunately the engine which runs these objects is obviously terrible but I will nod in the sense that they've done a great job with a crappy engine.
One thing which is always 100% always within their control is the story. Theme is vital if they want to sell TRIBBLE which this engine certainly is. Even for all the freelance majesty of almost every star trek series that has come before with their full breadth of options for creating the luster of 3d models to full blown computer generated scenes, those tools were always used to BOLSTER the story. (Even though recently JJtrek seems to have finally put a damper in that line of reasoning)
So for them to allow Geko to release dinos with lasers on their heads.. I knew that was a very deep barb and within all logical discourse dealing with it will only ache in time. I think honestly the only real way he could make up for this lapse of judgment is to seriously revisit his rushed product and to polish it for professionalism's sake.
Honestly.... It seems more like it's a matter of bug reports going into the inbox and they may or may not have gotten around to fixing them yet.... I've spent enough time modding various games to know how annoying bug testing and fixing can be.... some ideas I've had were totally scrapped because they conflicted with some base game mechanic in ways that I still don't understand.
Example from Space Empires 5:
I tried to create a system that is a small stellar cluster.
Step 1: add a central star; good
step 2; add 6 stars orbiting it at various distances; good
step 3; add a star orbiting each of the six in step 2; CRASH!
Why? no clue. Occasionally it'd work but not often. My best guess is that it was clumping the stars and somehow, not sure how, trying to spawn a star where there was no room. I never fixed it. I came up with a different way of achieving a similar result that worked better in some ways. I spawned the six stars in fixed points, and had their satellite stars spawn at random, the result was only somewhat more predictable.ORLY? When I think of TOS I think of glorious battles, both in space and ground. Kirk vs the Gorn, the Enterprise vs whatever the villain of the week was. The Doomsday device was particularly epic.
As usual, the Cryptic drone defends his masters. Thats all I hear...
The sad fact is that players will always demand more than what the devs CAN deliver. ALWAYS, and if you think Star Citizen will be any different, then I have a bridge on Galorndon Core to sell you....
ya know, you'd think they'd contact the people who did actual star trek episode scripts? Right?
Absolutely this. They need serious help in this regard. I know this isn't a blockbuster graphics rendering game so I rely off the story to perpetuate their medium and unfortunately all I see now is this epic attempt, mediocre content and colossal failure to follow through with a tantalizing tale.
If they hired just 1 person to be a directory of story board with a sole purpose to theme and re-theme the stories to interlock and become seamless, that alone would do wonders to create an integrity for this game.
Someone who would red flag bald dinos with laser heads to name one.
Aww... Youthful optimism, how cute. *pats on head*
Seriously though... I'm not gonna get excited over something that seems to be mostly hype right now.
If I had no idea who the guy making the game was, I would probably agree. But when someone actually has a track record, I dont mind getting excited. However getting excited is not the same thing as becoming delusional.
If I had no idea who the guy making the game was, I would probably agree. But when someone actually has a track record, I dont mind getting excited. However getting excited is not the same thing as becoming delusional.
Unh, huh. so what parts of his track record do you like?
Aww... Youthful optimism, how cute. *pats on head*
Seriously though... I'm not gonna get excited over something that seems to be mostly hype right now.
I've no illusions about how Roberts could TRIBBLE up Star Citizen though he'll have to try really hard to mess up something that is fundamentally a digest of the Wing Commander franchise which he has close ties to much of the creation and development of.
But thanks for the patronizing remarks and condescension otherwise, it's always fun times dealing with people like you.
Unh, huh. so what parts of his track record do you like?
Wing commander(series), Freelancer. Keep in mind, I'm talking about things I like, which is opinion based. Whether you like them or not is irrelevant to whether I do. And the fact that I do is the track record I am talking about.
Comments
This one was horribly rushed. I was one of the tribble testers in the "closed" session when it was just gold members.
We were almost wholly ignored. It is also glaringly obvious they either A. have no internal QA department or B. need to get some competent people that can actually stress test and check for bugs before something is released.
Dont give them any benefit of the doubt either, a simple test of the combat mechanics would have revealed the proc debuff error, a simple test of loading the client would have shows the grey bar at the bottom of the screen issue, among tons of others. Come on man.
Fleet Admiral Rylana - Fed Tac - U.S.S Wild Card - Tactical Miracle Worker Cruiser
Lifetime Subscriber since 2012 == 17,200 Accolades = RIP PvP and Vice Squad
Chief of Starfleet Intelligence Service == Praise Cheesus
I know the Dyson Sphere was a huge project to design and construct. I know all of the "new" content in there has taken a great deal of effort to prepare.
However I also know that adding bugs is pure laziness. Check your work!
I know ignoring old bugs and releasing new Seasons is pure commercialism. Make new shiny shiny for more greenbacks. Forget the players, they don't matter.
I know that not delaying the release of Season 8 is a 100% commercial decision. MOAR DOLLAZ PLEEZ!!
I know that Tribble testing is completely pointless; bug reports are always ignored. Those that aren't ignored and are fixed are done ONLY because they're easy and quick OR because the coder whodunnit will be fired for not rectifying their sloppy work. They would have been fixed without Tribble involvement.
I do have one desire though, one that could be sated by nothing more than one man...
I know it's a pipe dream, but I'd love it if one dev, just one, would come forth and tell us WHY they added the bugs. They didn't add themselves, computers only do what you tell them to do!
I'd love to know WHY they don't bother to test. Seriously, did not one dev bother to log into the game and press "Use Large Hypo" or "Use Engine Battery"? If they didn't, then someone really should be fired for gross incompetence. If they did, why did they allow the release of the bug? And then they should be fired for gross incompetence anyway. Which is, of course, why they always lie and cover their tracks I guess.
Really these are simple questions that would placate of great deal of frustration. Yes, they'd require a level of honesty that online develops never show, but it would be... well... nice.
Fleet Admiral Rylana - Fed Tac - U.S.S Wild Card - Tactical Miracle Worker Cruiser
Lifetime Subscriber since 2012 == 17,200 Accolades = RIP PvP and Vice Squad
Chief of Starfleet Intelligence Service == Praise Cheesus
Only time my mail icon dont flash is when i have new mail,,,,???????
Because Cryptic's devs are not really qualified programmers, I don't think. Probably like those shady doctors that can get a degree from Hollywood. When I think "Cryptic Dev", an image of "Doctor Nick" from the Simpsons flashes into my head.
I can seriously imagine that is what Daniel Stahl looks like. "HI EVERYBODY!"
Only if they don't test properly first!
Test thoroughly first and bugs will rarely be released, thus ensuring smooth, enjoyable gameplay.
Test at all and it will happen far less, so the players might complain and gripe a bit, but mostly the gameplay is fine and people can adapt.
Utterly fail to test and bugs will be released aplenty and will require constant maintenance to remove, detracting massively from the paying experience.
Which scenario are we, the players, enjoying/suffering at the moment?
Well, who are we to argue with such an empiric and scientifically backed evidence? :rolleyes:
if people like to think of trek as Kirk and his 5 year mission, that is good enough. tbut that also says alot in regards as to how everyone else expects star trek to be. peaceful exploration, some intrigue and the occasional bar room brawl.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Season 8 is nice and brings a easier reputation system and basically dinosaurs that are easy to kill. A big Jurassic Park..
I feel STO is just a shoot and kill game now completely different from "seaking new life" and exploration. I only play it now for those quick chat to fleet members. If anyone see this, check out Artemis Spaceship Simulator. I think STO should consist of the team gameplay like Vivienne.
Just saying, Season 8. A fail!
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Wrong? I say there will be far fewer bugs, ("rarely be released" not "never be released") not no bugs. You say there will still be bugs. You agree with me, yet you say I'm wrong. Odd
(And old bugs only resurface if the original coding is flawed. If the bug had been properly fixed, not simply patched over, then it wouldn't resurface)
Season 8 is a let down compared to last update. In New Romulus missions we had several new missions.. which is what I like the most in this game. I am actually rolling out more alts because I like to level up a character. After 50 I am little less active,.. since I am not a big fan of the grind,.. specially not for several character.
I want to be part of a story,.. follow that story.. even at top rank.
The ground battlezone is fun,.. I quite like it. if only it wasn't so far away. Its hard to organize groups to get the zones since most people on STO do not communicate much, unless you have a group from your fleet or such. Something of this feels odd.. surely there is better way to organize this?
The space missions (and the "mission".. I really think this should not be set up as a mission.. its really misleading. It would be better if this would be placed in available missions under tutorial. I was highly disappointed since I seeing those listed in the mission tabs thought it was actually a mission. Please remove it from there!) are .. I have to admit in my mind boring. I will probably not doing them that often. Its hard to get around in that map,.. and you don't really see where the missions are. You can't use the map to auto travel to certain points as you can in the section maps. Sure,.. the "space" map is beautiful.. (apart from I am seeing some clipping issues), but its not the kind of gameplay I like. In a actual mission it makes sense.. but here.. nahh.. I just don't like scanning here and then there... not interesting, its just pushing a button.
The new lockbox is that I consider to be the best lockbox. I love the pet and I love the outfit. I do like the look of the nee ships.. the science ship is a rarity.. but I also know that for me I will probably never get hold of one. The 2 ships I have been able to get via lockbox was actually given to me by very nice friends. And yes I opened a few boxes myself, no luck for me.
The sphere fleet holding is .. umm.. very bare. But honestly I don't think i will spend that much time at this fleet holding, .. these fleet holdings are so empty.
I personally think they need to make use of these pleases better.. and not only fleet holdings.. but also common places like DS9.. give us purpose to travel to certain places. And yes. there is that already in some extent.. Integrate those places with actual a story, not just a mission to click here and there and thats it.
I do like the new STFs.. although I haven't actually played them yet. The idea seems nice.
Anyways.. the conclusion is that this season is no big hit,.. yes ground is really nice but the space is not that interesting. If I will do anything this season its ground.. but even that is still not super interesting.
I hate to be negative .. but thats my impression of what I am seeing. The main big hit for me is that now I can play this game on mac.
..Oh yeah I almost forgot.. I do LOVE the new FED tutorial.. a really interesting story. And I love the voice/characters in that piece.
Really? How is it unacceptable? You do understand that knowing a bug exists is a totally different thing from knowing what has caused it and a totally different thing from actually fixing it.
Some bugs can take ages to track down and fix. should they not fix any of the others bugs they can fix in the mean time then? They should let every bug they can fix just sit there unresolved until they can track down them all. is that your solution?
should they not mention them at all, and be accused of not acknowledging them?
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This game has just become pathetic.
This is what happens when a Chinese company is the parent company of Cryptic. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but quality control has never been a strong point for the Chinese.
In all fairness I'll list what I've enjoyed so far:
I DO like the combined populace effort. More constructs like the battlezone were needed. So the developer's glean on this mechanic was spot-on. However like all things Geko's lead have taken us on usually end up construed hastily and introduced with little to no QA whatsoever. The sphere of influence mission alone was so plagued by spelling errors that it made me terribly annoyed. Not that there were spelling errors per se but that they didn't care enough to read through the panels they created for the story line which I find highly detracting.
I DO like the components that went into the breach PVE. Its about time they offer a map with a chance to immerse the player with an intuitive environment.
But that's about it.. I could go on a long-arms list of why season 8 is terrible but it's nothing different than what I was trying to warn about for months now. If it weren't for the handful of dynamics introduced season 8 would be a complete flop.
The part that really annoys me beyond belief is that not only did Geko refuse to listen when numerous players complained about the dinos with lasers, his product is a joke. The V-Rex is so easy to kill and when its surrounded it just stands there and roars a little and gets pecked down. That and all his dinos are bald and unrealistic.. It's really a travesty how watered down they make the maps feel.
The raptor/runner whatever dinos.. They're not scary at all. They're like targs with jurasic park imagery.
They would have been better off creating a wide variety of mech warriors which would have been much easier to swallow for theme's sake.
Shouldn't Geko be retired for this?
The worst part of it is that they KNOW their graphics are unoptimized, BADLY. Yet they insist on overcrowding instances and then putting an absolute ton of stuff you can't stop from rendering to make it all run worse than ever.
I was in the sphere last night, where the 4 Voth dreads show up and good grief, if your camera was facing a certain way the framerate droped like crazy. I thikn its all the trash foating in columns. Why did they feel the need to add so much graphical detail to a zone they KNOW will be overcrowded with PCs and NPCs?
The real problem with the more modern trek interpretation of the prime directive is that it requires people stop being people. You can only truly follow it to the letter if you were an heartless machine... and even data spat on the prime directive now and again!
We also have countless trek writers looking for a source of drama and thinking they can show inner turmoil in the character by making them struggle with the prime directive. Notice they always went out of their way to say how noble and high minded the prime directive was on those episodes when it required starfleet officers to be total douchebags? How can such a thing be good? How is letting aplanet die EVER the right choice? What a bunch of BS! lol
The biggest flaw of enlightened humanity in trek? It was often portrayed as inhuman. Give mea flawed human civilization any day over the federation! Of course, that was starfleet officers, the average fed citizen could go around dancing in pre warp culture's capital cities telling everyone about outer space if they wanted, since it was clearly stated that the prime directive only applied to starfleet. I can only hope there's entire civilian federation fleets tasked with saving non fed planets and cultures from themselves, natural disasters, redirecting asteroids, etc.
For all we know they are gathering them to use in a desperate attempt to stop the Iconians and here we come along and perhaps completely destroy any chance of them being the catalyst to stopping a full fledged invasion.
We just listen to the Romulan voice of reason, the voice Starfleet has always questioned in all of Star Trek since TOS and now we are even taking orders from these Romulan's to quash what ever it is the Voth are attempting to do with these Omega particles.
There really did need to be some episode missions that CONTINUED the storyline that the feature episode with Worf started, and really it barely started that story and if we are in the part of the story the Sphere has us now it makes no sense what so ever. Any fiction writer would be told by their editor to produce the chapters that are missing, I can positively guarantee that.
So it is painfully obvious to me that Cryptic has no idea what so ever when it comes to writing good fiction, oh they can start things but they have no finish what so ever.:(
ya know, you'd think they'd contact the people who did actual star trek episode scripts? Right?
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
Example from Space Empires 5:
I tried to create a system that is a small stellar cluster.
Step 1: add a central star; good
step 2; add 6 stars orbiting it at various distances; good
step 3; add a star orbiting each of the six in step 2; CRASH!
Why? no clue. Occasionally it'd work but not often. My best guess is that it was clumping the stars and somehow, not sure how, trying to spawn a star where there was no room. I never fixed it. I came up with a different way of achieving a similar result that worked better in some ways. I spawned the six stars in fixed points, and had their satellite stars spawn at random, the result was only somewhat more predictable. ORLY? When I think of TOS I think of glorious battles, both in space and ground. Kirk vs the Gorn, the Enterprise vs whatever the villain of the week was. The Doomsday device was particularly epic.
My character Tsin'xing
So what they have is a massive collection of objects, some are just simple virtual objects like debris in a space map. It's likely to be just a 3d model with perhaps a layer or two. But like all objects in a 3D environment there are layers of color and texture which composite those objects. So one could say that in a way its very complex and this is why they keep talking about anything simple like more storage space for fleets would create a "database issue". It just means more memory allocation for yet again, even more objects.
Unfortunately the engine which runs these objects is obviously terrible but I will nod in the sense that they've done a great job with a crappy engine.
One thing which is always 100% always within their control is the story. Theme is vital if they want to sell TRIBBLE which this engine certainly is. Even for all the freelance majesty of almost every star trek series that has come before with their full breadth of options for creating the luster of 3d models to full blown computer generated scenes, those tools were always used to BOLSTER the story. (Even though recently JJtrek seems to have finally put a damper in that line of reasoning)
So for them to allow Geko to release dinos with lasers on their heads.. I knew that was a very deep barb and within all logical discourse dealing with it will only ache in time. I think honestly the only real way he could make up for this lapse of judgment is to seriously revisit his rushed product and to polish it for professionalism's sake.
As usual, the Cryptic drone defends his masters. Thats all I hear...
Don't confuse Chris Roberts with Cryptic/PWE.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Absolutely this. They need serious help in this regard. I know this isn't a blockbuster graphics rendering game so I rely off the story to perpetuate their medium and unfortunately all I see now is this epic attempt, mediocre content and colossal failure to follow through with a tantalizing tale.
If they hired just 1 person to be a directory of story board with a sole purpose to theme and re-theme the stories to interlock and become seamless, that alone would do wonders to create an integrity for this game.
Someone who would red flag bald dinos with laser heads to name one.
Seriously though... I'm not gonna get excited over something that seems to be mostly hype right now.
My character Tsin'xing
If I had no idea who the guy making the game was, I would probably agree. But when someone actually has a track record, I dont mind getting excited. However getting excited is not the same thing as becoming delusional.
My character Tsin'xing
I've no illusions about how Roberts could TRIBBLE up Star Citizen though he'll have to try really hard to mess up something that is fundamentally a digest of the Wing Commander franchise which he has close ties to much of the creation and development of.
But thanks for the patronizing remarks and condescension otherwise, it's always fun times dealing with people like you.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Wing commander(series), Freelancer. Keep in mind, I'm talking about things I like, which is opinion based. Whether you like them or not is irrelevant to whether I do. And the fact that I do is the track record I am talking about.